Children grow their own lunches

With the debate on school lunches raging, one school has taken the step of supplying its own vegetables.

Primary school pupils at Landscove School, near Ashburton, Devon, are now growing their own vegetables after the head teacher opted out of local authority school dinners.

Head Robin Smith said: “I want them to eat the same food they have had some part in growing themselves.”

The school has signed a contract with a local organic farm to provide the food and to cook it in a custom-made kitchen.

Smith said: “We will be planting up little parts of fields and the children will be going back to harvest some of the vegetables. They will take them to the kitchen and the cook will help them prepare the vegetables for that day’s school dinner.”

Under the council service, food is cooked in Totnes, five miles away, and then driven to the school. Smith said his system would reduce transport and packaging costs and he wanted to bring back the social element of school lunches.

“It shouldn’t be considered a re-fueling activity, but something that resembles a civilised meal.”